Re: Software Licenced Under a Specific Version of GPL
Ari Makela wrote:
>
> I asked because *I* didn't want to screw up my package. I've thought
> for years that Debian is in many ways the nicest OS for i386 (and of
> course for some other platforms) and when I've made packages I've
> tried to keep up the quality that Debian has. That's why I ask when I
> feel unsure what to do.
>
> I got some good advice and I'm going to follow it. I'm going to write
> a new file which says that /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL should have
> GPL version 2 and if it doesn't doesn't the user can get it from
> foo. If someone thinks this is a bad idea I'm open to other ideas.
What you want to do seems perfectly reasonable to me, i.e. wishing to refer
to a particular version of the GPL. I can see from various public forums
that this way of using the GPL is likely to happen more often too.
My belief is that the best approach would be to have
/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL symbolically linked in a manner similar to
library versions. This will mean that someone wishing to specify a
particular version of the GPL can do so by a further symlink to the correct
version.
I can't see that this either (a) makes things worse, (b) is hard, or (c) is
unreasonable.
To make it happen you should file a wishlist bug against the package which
provides the GPL, asking it to provide it as a versioned file and symlink
/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL to the most recent version.
Regards,
Andrew.
--
_____________________________________________________________________
Andrew McMillan, e-mail: Andrew @ catalyst . net . nz
Catalyst IT Ltd, PO Box 10-225, Level 22, 105 The Terrace, Wellington
Me: +64(21)635-694, Fax:+64(4)499-5596, Office: +64(4)499-2267xtn709
Reply to: